


Welcoming Party

by poeticname



Category: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, 快盗戦隊ルパンレンジャー VS 警察戦隊パトレンジャー | Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patoranger
Genre: Crossover, First Meetings, Gen, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 10:24:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18990784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poeticname/pseuds/poeticname
Summary: Umika gets introduced to and admires a couple of pirates.





	Welcoming Party

Kairi hasn’t stopped being snippy with this ship’s apparent captain or with Noel since they set foot up here. Neither of the others seem to mind his behaviour, Noel clearly expected Kairi to react like this and the captain is leaning back in his chair with one leg crossed and a single raised eyebrow, but Umika can’t help but worry a little. A Lupin Collection piece on another planet is no laughing matter, and though Kairi usually gets there with other sentai eventually she’s not sure they have the time to wait for him to warm up.

It’s getting awkward to just stand around watching, at any rate. When she looks to Touma for some kind of cue he’s ignoring the argument and looking around like he’s taking stock of the room, which doesn’t really give Umika any clue what she should be doing. 

Kairi’s cycled back to just telling Noel he’s annoyed that Noel purposely didn’t tell him about the Kyurangers being unable to come and maybe if Umika can get Noel out of this conversation Kairi can hash things out with that other red and—

“You shouldn’t worry about them, Miss Hayami. The closed quarters of a ship have a way of making everyone forgive and forget eventually.”

While Umika wasn’t looking the crew’s pink member had approached her from the side, smiling with an easiness that makes Umika almost entirely forget about the argument.

“Pardon me for using your name without introducing myself,” she says, and does a little curtsy. “I am Ahim de Famille, your silver teammate gave us a report with your names in it beforehand.”

Umika finds herself bowing her head slightly in response, “Don’t worry about it, Ahim, it’s very nice to meet you!”

She wonders for a second if she should have matched Ahim’s formality, with the “miss” and everything, but from Ahim’s continued and growing smile, Umika seems to have done alright.

“The pleasure’s all mine. Would you like to join me for tea while we wait for our teammates to cool down?”

“I’d love to,” Umika says, genuinely meaning it.

Ahim turns around to guide Umika to a table at the back of the room, where a tea set is already neatly arranged. They haven’t even moved out of earshot but Umika can feel Kairi asking the captain what his plan is fading away to the background as she sits down across from Ahim.

Ahim picks up the teapot with as much poise as everything else she’s done so far. Umika kind of wants to ask if she’s ever been a model, because Umika’s never seen so much grace in someone outside of modelling and with how cute she is, Ahim could unquestionably make it as one.

She doesn’t get the chance to ask before she’s distracted by the tea pouring out of the pot, a sparkling apricot-orange liquid that looks lit by the sun even though they’re inside a pirate spaceship at night.

“I’m afraid we don’t have any Earth teas, Gai always gets through our stash before we’re able to visit again and nobody wanted to go out and get any in case your party arrived while we were gone.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Umika insists as she takes a full cup from Ahim carefully, hoping her clumsy hands don’t betray her now, “this is lovely. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Ahim pours her own cup with as serene a smile as ever, “It’s the local specialty of a single settlement planet a few lightyears out from here, made from both the petals of a flower there and a sort of rock that adds a nice flavour when ground to a powder.”

Then, Ahim looks up to Umika’s left.

“Luka, would you say that makes it a kind of salt, even if the flavour’s sweet?”

“I mean, ask Doc for the real answer but I’d call it a sugar myself.”

Umika sets down her teacup in surprise as she realizes that a second member of the crew approached them while she wasn’t looking. A woman wearing a yellow coat is standing beside Umika and grinning as she looks her over.

“Welcome to the ship, I’m Luka, and I gotta say your phantom thief outfit’s by far the best one of the lot.”

It takes Umika a second to catch up to what Luka said, but once she does Umika physically feels herself perk up.

“Thanks so much! I made it myself, Kogure tried to get me an outfit himself but I thought ‘at the very least I can do this’ and sewed it together, though I don’t know how helpful that was in the end.”

Luka continues to grin as she walks around to Ahim’s side of the table. She also carries herself with enough decisiveness to be a model if she wanted to and her clear confidence would be intimidating in any other circumstances, but Umika’s still too struck by the compliment to think about that so much.

“Aw, I’m sure it was great to know that you can get things together yourself, or at least that’s how I’d feel if I was getting you on my team for heists.”

“You have a heist team?…”

“I mean, not usually, I tend to steal stuff on my own, but that’s what you guys do isn’t it?”

Umika tilts her head as she thinks that one through, “No, I don’t think we do heists, we don’t usually have to sneak in anywhere.”

“Ooh, how do you get to your targets then?” Luka sits down beside Ahim, who is now pouring a third cup of tea, and leans forward in Umika’s direction. “And what do you guys steal again? If you’ve seen any cool jewels recently you should tell me all about them.”

“Our targets are usually out in the open, or hiding out somewhere abandoned, and we only take pieces of the Lupin Collection, which are…” 

Umika almost casts around for Noel to explain what exactly the Collection is, but she can suddenly hear that he and Kairi are still talking. Probably better to ignore that.

“They’re tools, kind of,” she ends up saying, feeling that isn’t quite right. “The Ganglers use them for evil, so we take them back and give them to the Lupin Estate for storage.”

Luka seems to be thinking that over more seriously than Umika would have thought. 

“Then you don’t know how to do heists?”

Umika looks down at her tea again as she nods. Not knowing how to heist isn’t something she’d normally be embarrassed about, obviously most people don’t know how to do that, but Luka’s clearly a very experienced pirate. She must be expecting more out of someone who goes by Lupin Yellow than Umika.

“That’s perfect, actually!”

Umika looks up to see Luka with a sparkle in her eye and a growing grin on her face.

“That means I can teach you my way of doing things.”

Looking at her coolly leaning back in her chair and shooting Umika a more welcoming smile this time, Umika thinks she’d be more then happy to learn from her.

“You won’t necessarily be in charge of the whole mission, Luka,” Ahim interrupts, calm even as her tone is lightly scolding. “This is going to be a team effort.”

Luka scoffs, “Then I’ll just make the team realize I’m best suited to be in charge of this one!”

“I’d put in my vote for you,” Umika says, and Luka holds up her teacup to Umika as if to cheers them.

As Umika holds up her cup in turn, trying not to be worried that her tea will spill, Ahim shakes her head a little, but she’s smiling.

“You shouldn’t encourage her Miss Hayami, she argues with Marvelous enough as is.”

“Come on Ahim,” Luka leans a little in her crew member’s direction now, “we’ve got four pairs of extra thief hands. Let me have my heist!”

“That’s for the team to decide,” she insists again.

“Oooh, I didn’t hear a “no” in there?”

“There wasn’t one,” Ahim says, and Luka seems even more pleased, “I simply think we should drink our tea and wait for the others to join us before having a discussion. Marvelous seems just about finished the first negotiations with Mister Yano so they shouldn’t be long.”

Umika does in fact nearly spill her tea as she hides her involuntary laugh at “Mister Yano” with a cough, making both Ahim and Luka look in her direction. Once her teacup’s safely on the table she lets herself giggle before responding.

“You should probably just call him Kairi.”

“Might I call you Umika then?”

Thrown off by both the question and Ahim and Luka looking at her intently for the answer, Umika can’t help but blush. It feels a bit too fast for such poised, more experienced sentai members to address her familiarly but, well, if they’re going to be on a ship together for a couple of weeks she may as well take the chance now.

“Of course you can,” she answers, and both Ahim and Luka look happy enough with that answer that Umika feels her cheeks heat up even more.

“Well, I must say I am very much looking forward to working with you, Umika,” Ahim lifts her teacup to the centre of the table in the same cheers motion that Luka did earlier.

“Same here!” Luka says, holding up her cup next to Ahim’s.

Umika nods and holds her teacup up in turn, completing a sort of triangle over the centre, “I’m happy to be learning from both of you.”

Ahim and Luka both move to take sips of their now-cooled tea and Umika follows suit.

The sparkly orange liquid is sweet and fruity in such startlingly new ways that Umika can’t even think of an Earth comparison, but the surprise makes it delicious. As the three of them sit with their tea for a moment Umika notices that Kairi sounds considerably calmer, the atmosphere feels calm even beyond the table, and sounds from outside the ship suggest they’re lifting the anchor.

Umika might have worried about that five minutes ago, but Ahim’s asking her how the tea was and Luka’s calling the others to the table “now that they’re finally done” and Umika feels that no matter how daunting their mission is, it’s going to go perfectly well.


End file.
